Growing your Business by Planting Social Media Seeds

Nowadays it can seem like Social Media is taking over the world. Virtually every industry has some involvement in Social Media, even if it’s just employees using personal accounts. By creating a Social Media strategy for business, organizations can expand their business to almost anywhere on the planet.

While Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn present great opportunities for companies, it is also important for organizations to assess the risk involved with cultivating Social Media involvement.

Respondents in a Best Practices, LLC benchmarking report offered various reasons for maintaining or increasing their involvement in Social Media. The most popular responses included:

Clearly, many companies have already become very involved with, and have learned how to grow business with social media. By examining and becoming aware of the risks associated with corporate Social Media involvement, leaders can allow their Social Media platforms to flourish.

Identified in the study, “Using Social Media to Drive Business Outcomes,” were barriers that organizations, regardless of industry, may be faced with when developing their Social Media strategies.

Message Control: Respondents mentioned that it is difficult to control their organizational message. Various industries, especially respondents from the pharmaceutical industry, are wary to increase involvement due to the fear of spreading negative or incorrect information about a product.

Restrictions on Consumer Involvement:Many resources are required to effectively monitor consumer involvement. In the pharmaceutical industry, there are even many restrictions on actual involvement with consumers via Social Media sources.

High Costs Associated with Social Media: The life sciences field has typically been laggard in their approach to Social Media and Digital Marketing involvement. While some companies have mastered the art of Social Media, others are still trying to learn how these sites work and how they will ultimately benefit their organization

While the risks may seem daunting to some, many industries have seen extreme benefit from becoming more involved on Social Media. It is hard to deny that the majority of the world has some involvement in the online world. In order to expand business and become more global, companies can use benchmarking to significantly improve their Social Media tactics.